


You Do Not Have to Be Good

by scintilla_misha



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Challenge fic, M/M, angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 09:45:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14162100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scintilla_misha/pseuds/scintilla_misha
Summary: A collection of Crabbe/Goyle ficlets.





	You Do Not Have to Be Good

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.This poem is also featured at the beginning of this collection.
> 
> Also, there are times when I ignore canon. It is my right and, dare I say, privilege to ignore canon. 
> 
> This story was written for a Potterotica-adjacent monthly challenge. To learn more about the podcast Potterotica, visit their website: https://potteroticapodcast.com/ 
> 
> Disclaimer: All material that you recognize belong to the world of Harry Potter, created by J.K. Rowling.

“You do not have to be good.  
You do not have to walk on your knees  
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.  
You only have to let the soft animal of your body  
love what it loves.  
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.  
Meanwhile the world goes on.  
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain  
are moving across the landscapes,  
over the prairies and the deep trees,  
the mountains and the rivers.  
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,  
are heading home again.  
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,  
the world offers itself to your imagination,  
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --  
over and over announcing your place  
in the family of things.”

[“Wild Geese”, Mary Oliver]

 

(1)

Together, they watched it: the great skull and snake that appeared in the sky, bottle green and swirling. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight to either of them: both boys had seen the Dark Mark on their fathers’ arms, the way it faded over the years, the way it had been growing darker in recent months. They had heard their fathers whispering, hadn’t they? And in turn, they had started whispering amongst themselves: was it time? Was it coming?

Both Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle had grown up believing that they, too, would have the Dark Mark someday, with the vague notion that the Dark Lord would return and restore the magical world to its rightful place of power. For a long time, that had felt like some kind of abstract belief: like the Muggles who believe that Santa visits them in the night, or that the Easter Bunny hides eggs.

They weren’t supposed to be at the World Cup in the first place. Draco Malfoy hadn’t invited them, as he preferred to spend his summers perfectly isolated from the rest of the world, cozied up like a pompous brat surrounded by white peacocks and cold, marble floors, his mother babying him. Their fathers had been less than interested in the World Cup too, but at the last moment, they’d received the summons from Lucius Malfoy: get to the campgrounds now.

Muggle sport. That’s what they’d called it. In the campground, their fathers marched alongside Lucius, masked and anonymous, levitating the Muggles and terrorizing not just them, but all the wizards who thought that that kind of thing was over. A reminder, perhaps, that they were still there, that they could do what they wanted, that they’d gotten away with it. That they were superior, that they had magic to use as they wished. Certainly, if they were born with the ability to use it, they were supposed to use it against people who didn’t have it. Wasn’t that the purpose if it all?

Crabbe and Goyle sat, still and quiet, on the hill where they’d been left, as the greatest sign of power that they knew swirled above them. And though they knew it was supposed to fill them with a sense of awe, with a sense of purpose, a sense of pride that their fathers (and therefore, they) were on the right side, both felt nothing but pure, cold terror. The terror of children who realize that until that moment, they had been safe in the knowledge that their Dark Marks would be ceremonial, that they would never be expected to fight for anything.

And in the darkness, it was Crabbe’s hand that touched Goyle’s first. As the screams stopped in the woods and in the campgrounds below, as they knew their fathers would be rushing towards them, disapparating and apparating to grab them quickly, they had merely a moment. Two hands touching on the dew-covered grass, that great skull in the sky mirroring the lush, green color, and for a brief moment, the world stilled, quiet and peaceful.

(2)

They woke, groggy and disoriented, their feet frigid. Darkness, nothing but. It was Vincent Crabbe who sat up first, rubbing his head.

“Wuh happened?” He muttered. Gregory Goyle only grunted in response, rolling and hitting several buckets, mops crashing from the wall over top of him. The darkness seemed overwhelming, the closeness too much. Crabbe swallowed down the familiar feeling of panic, the rising fear that he would be stuck inside this place forever. What had happened?

The cupcakes. Chocolate, delicious. They’d gobbled them without thinking. What had his father always told him? Never eat anything you don’t know the source of. He grumbled, thinking of it now, the greedy joy he had felt upon seeing the cupcakes. He felt merely irritated with himself now.

“You ok?” Goyle finally asked, struggling to his feet. They both wore only socks, their shoes gone. Crabbe’s eyes couldn’t adjust to the dark, he had no idea where his friend was, no idea where the door was even. They both started to move, but ended up ramming into each other, their great heads smashing into each other.

Finally, after a great while of searching, they found the doorknob—but as Goyle pulled on it, he started to panic. They both stood in the pitch black, their hearts in their throats, the sound of silence around them so intensely that they could hear each other’s breathing and heartbeats.

“It’s locked,” Goyle finally said, his voice thick. Crabbe knew he was crying, knew the tears ran down his face in rivets. Silently, as they always did in the dark. They both hated the dark, feared it with a passion. They both had been punished, separately, before they’d even known each other, with long periods of time spent in locked cabinets.

“We’ll get it open,” Crabbe said, finally, finding his voice in the dark. His rifled through his robe pockets and finally found his wand. “What’s the spell? For locks?”

Goyle let out a small noise, almost like a keen, like some kind of animal that had beached itself on the shore and lay dying. It made the hair on the back of Crabbe’s neck stand up.

“ _Alohamora_ ,” Goyle finally said, his voice shaking.

“ _Alohamora_ ,” Crabbe repeated, pointing his wand in the direction of the doorknob. They both heard it, the faint click, then Goyle’s hand groped and found it, swinging it open.

Fresh air—Crabbe hadn’t even noticed the stale, wet smell of the broom closet until they both exploded out of it, slipping in their socks into the Entrance Hall—and light, the candles around them like rows of angels. For a long time, long past curfew hours, they sat on the steps and merely breathed, pressed side by side.

(3)

There were the terrible years, of course. The year after Umbridge, where they spent more of their time as other people, standing in abandoned corridors for Malfoy, where they heard Malfoy talking to himself, softly and harshly, more often than not. The months spent in anxiety, as if they were all being stretched thin by something that had grabbed hold of them. They’d seen it in Malfoy’s face: that little, pinched face, with his white-blonde hair swept back, the bags under his eyes growing more and more purple as the days rambled on. They’d seen it in the others too: Harry Potter, especially, the way he watched them as they walked through the Great Hall, his green eyes as bright as the great Dark Mark they’d seen in the sky.

It felt like a whole lifetime ago, when they’d tilted their heads, smelling burning and hearing nothing but the cold whistle of the wind through the trees, their hands barely touching. An unspoken agreement. _Mine mine_ , one voice said; _mine mine_ , the other responded. The way the fear had settled inside of them, like hollow stones, bubbling up at the oddest times. When Crabbe sat in class and suddenly remembered the way his hand felt in Goyle’s; when Goyle watched his father walk across Platform 9 3/4 to retrieve him in the summer; when they sat on the train, side by side, Malfoy across from them.

Sometimes, they looked at each other and it was if they both remembered at once, that single, simple moment. _Mine mine._

They’d both always been good at being told what to do. By their fathers. By Malfoy. By Snape. They’d followed the rules, they’d sought the power they were told to want. They reached into the ever darkening horizon and grasped for the key to the Dark Lord, as foreign and frightening as it was comforting.

Wasn’t this, they thought, what they were supposed to want? This ever encroaching darkness?

But then, they weren’t supposed to want each other. But they did. In the silent moments when they took the Polyjuice Potion, undressed in abandoned bathrooms, dropping in the plucked hair of a first year. In the times when Malfoy finally went to sleep and they sat, silent and tense, in the Slytherin common room. It was not supposed to happen, was it? The feelings that bloomed like roses inside of each others. Best friends. Malfoy’s cronies. Blockheads.

But when Goyle closed his eyes and thought of his future, it was always beside Crabbe. He never saw the Dark Lord.

(4)

“You’re supposed to be the smart one,” Malfoy hissed. They crouched behind the bushes, in the massive gardens of the Malfoy Estate. Nearby, a white peacock keened, raising its massive tail feathers and beginning to strut towards the party.

Their parents, dressed in their finest summer robes, stood near the fountain in the middle of the garden. Around them, house elves carried silver trays above their heads, bobbing here and there with glasses of prosecco and tiny plates of appetizers. The three of them were not supposed to be there, were not supposed to be anywhere near there.

They were seven years old, old enough to know better than to let go of a Snitch outdoors, in the middle of a summer party. It was Crabbe who lost grip of it, his great, clumsy fingers unable to stand the buzzing of the sharp little wings anymore. When it had happened, Goyle had let out a sound like he had been punched and Draco’s face had gone white.

They watched it now, nothing more than a golden blur, flit around the party. It hit a glass of prosecco, splashing Draco’s mother’s dress. She looked around, her eyes wide. Draco shifted down further behind the shrubbery, knowing that his mother would be looking for him. The Snitch then hit the peacock, smack in the side of the neck, causing it to let out a great, horrified noise that drew everyone’s attention.

Without realizing it, Goyle found himself standing up, watching the Snitch smash through the ice foundation, knock over several house elves, plunge into the fountain and emerge just in time to hit his own father square in the jaw. All three boys finally stood, pale faced, as their parents turned to them.

White hot. They all understood what that meant at that moment. It had been vague before, a notion they read of in books: white hot pain, white hot fear. It burned inside of them, as all three boys turned and tried to scurry into the house. But they were caught, by Lucius Malfoy, his wand out, his jaw set.

It would be Severus Snape who caught the Snitch, holding it in the palm of his hand as each boy’s father held him by the forearm. Just as Crabbe Senior disapparated, his mouth nothing more than a thin line, Crabbe caught Goyle’s eye; together, they blinked, knowing what would come, knowing that they would never make the mistake again.

Crabbe was supposed to be the smart one.

(5)

All Goyle could remember, when he was asked about it afterwards, was the heat.

At least that’s what he always said. Perched in a pub, Draco Malfoy nearby, half-listening as he absentmindedly drew circles on the smooth lacquer of the bar, Goyle would shrug his sloped shoulders and put his palms to the ceiling and talk about the heat. The intensity of it, the way it surrounded him. The heat, it had been like something pressing on top of him—something he couldn’t exactly escape ever again. He didn’t say that part though: he kept that to himself, the feeling that, for the rest of his life, he would feel that heat, the shuddering realization that it was not Crabbe who scooped him up, but Ron and Hermione. And the hollow empty feeling when he had realized they had left his best friend (mine mine) behind.

He never told anyone about the sound he had made when he realized Crabbe was dead, died in a blaze of heat so intense he still dreamed about it. Sitting in pubs, or in parlors, surrounded by friends or new acquaintances, he could talk about the trials easy enough; he could talk about knowing good old Harry Potter and how he had saved him and how he had chosen that moment to turn his life around.

Even though it was a lie. He knew it. Malfoy knew it. Sometimes, it surprised him when people believed him. But then, they hadn’t known him and Crabbe.

Afterwards, when everything was done, when they all only had the rubble left behind, their parents forever marked as traitors… what were they? What would they have been?

The grey zone. The space in-between, saved only by their ages and nothing much else. Two boys who had lost a friend. One boy who had lost something else, who never talked about it, an unspoken secret between Malfoy and Goyle. Crabbe, the boy they’d left behind, to die in the fire he had caused. The secret that had been left to die with him.

They never found Crabbe’s body. Goyle tried to convince Professor McGonagall, over and over, letter after letter, to give him access to the Room just once. Just one day. During the summer, or a break. Even just an hour. _An hour_.

But the answer was always the same: the Room had been destroyed, along with everything inside of it. Years and years and years of history. And a boy named Crabbe. Who was supposed to be the smart one.

Goyle always ended the story the same: Ron and Hermione saved him, Draco and he ran away, they joined their parents for a time, but things were different. They supported Voldemort’s defeat.

No one asked about Crabbe. The boy named Vincent Crabbe disappeared into history, as anonymous as anyone else lost in the war. No one remembered their names except those who found themselves carved by their memories.

(6)

Age did strange things. Goyle could still remember the sureness he felt, the night of the World Cup, hearing the sounds of his father, and his friends’ fathers, terrorize Muggles. He could still remember how proud it made him feel: the bubbling _rightness_ of it, that it was their place, that it would be his place, that he would be ushered into a world where it was pure fun and jovial, just reminding the world that wizards were far superior.

It felt like a different world. Goyle, aged, his hair gone white, splaying in a halo around the crown his head, his nose gone bulbous from rosacea, his joints achey, remembered the feeling. But the sureness was gone. He felt nothing besides cold, lightning-bright embarrassment. The novelty of youth was cut with guilt: the people he had hurt, the idea that he had once thought himself superior to anyone.

And Crabbe. There was always Crabbe in those memories. No longer the memories of boyhood fun—the Snitch let go in a party of Death Eaters, waking up terrified and blind in a broom closet, holding hands as the grounds of the World Cup burned. They reminded him of his loss. Of the aching in his bones that was more than arthritis. His bones were carved with the name of a boy who no one remembered. Vincent Crabbe was not the boy who lived; he was the boy who burned, trapped in the Room of Requirement.

If they had both survived, he wondered, what would have happened? But he knew the answer.

There was no surviving the war for them. There never had been. Goyle knew he too had died in the Room of Requirement, when they were 17. His body had been lifted off the ground and carried out, but he was left behind. When they sat about the World Cup as children, it had been decided for them: they were in it, even if they thought they were safe, and being in it meant you didn’t survive.

Goyle puttered through his garden. It had been years since he had seen Malfoy, since he had spoken to anyone who remembered Crabbe. Vincent, he reminded himself, he called him Vin sometimes—when they were alone. He sniffed, thinking of his friend, thinking of how hot the fire had been, how _destructive_ … just like them, just like they had been, just like they would have been if they had both survived. They would have consumed each other in their hatred, in their anger, in their pure terror.

He blinked. Standing there, in the grass, was Vincent Crabbe. Just as he had been on that day in the Room of Requirement. Black hair and his eyes as dark as chocolate frogs. He smiled, as if no time had passed, as if he recognized the Gregory Goyle that stood, slightly hunched, before him.

Vincent reached out his hand. Goyle blinked again, wondering if the sun was in his eyes—or if he had, as his Healer sometimes hinted, really gone round the bend this time.

“C’mon, Greg,” Vincent said.

And so, it was without hesitation that Goyle reached out his own liver spotted hand, his fingernails lined with age, his joints aching, green grass staining the pads of his fingers. For the first time in 50 years, they touched hands.

And it was like touching fire.


End file.
